Troubleshooting My Color-Changing Deck Routine

I need some help troublshooting a routine I’ve been working on. It’s Paul Harris’ Color Stunner.

I used to do this years ago and it always seemed to go over really well. But recently, at the climax of the effect, people seem to activeley hate it. They’re booing me; cursing at me; saying “I hate that,” “That sucks,” “Why would you show us that?” One woman even vomited.

For those who don’t know, it’s a Color Changing Deck routine.

You start with a regular deck with one odd-backed card (for this example, a red card) on top of it. Place the deck in a case that matched the odd-backed card.

You remove the deck and do a face-up Hindu shuffle, occasionally flashing the back of the right hand’s packet to show “multiple” red backs.

No one ever questions this. So I know that’s not the issue. They frequntly say, “This is certainly just a regular red-backed deck of cards.”

You then use a face-up riffle force to force the odd-backed card on the spectator.

Then the Opitcal Reverse to set the deck to be apparently shuffled face-up into face-down, while still only showing the single red-backed card.

Next I use Tilt to show multiple red-back cards mixed in with the face bup half. Still, at this point everyone seems engaged, interested, and not questioning anything.

I now snap my fingers and reveal all the cards in the deck have righted themselves except their selection.

HUGE cheers at this point. “Yes! Amazing! We love you! What a great trick! It’s so good to see expert level close-up magic in person!” Etc. etc.

I then say, “What if I told you this deck isn’t a red-backed deck at all?”

And they’re like. “No way! But I saw it! I swear it’s red. If that’s not a red deck, I’m going to lose my mind. Greatest magic trick ever!” And so on.

But then when I actually reveal the color change, that’s when they become openly hostile. One guy punched me. Another woman took a shit on my close-up pad.

Any idea why?

DoublePrint Gum

Here’s an idea from Harry Milas that I find interesting, but as it stands at the moment is maybe of limited use. However, it inspired another idea that I think has potential if anyone wants to pursue it. I’ll share that after his idea.

I bought this pack of gum in Liverpool the other day and noticed it's branding was in Arabic on one side and English on the other.

I came back from the shops and showed it to my mate (paddle move showing two arabic sides) and wondered what language it was in and what it said. I was hoping he'd say we could translate it in the Google translate photo app, and luckily he did. He got his phone out.

I only did a paddle move twice, once when I first showed it under the guise of looking for anything on the packaging in English, and again when I decided which side was "best" for the camera

When I held it in frame it looked like a perfect English translation (because it was). I put it on his hand and then I said  "if you take a photo of it then it locks it in place" while tapping the take photo button. He wasn't sure what I meant but after a sec he took the phone away and saw the gum wrapper was in English. He was genuinely shocked, to a degree I wasn't expecting. 

I realised later that until the gum changed in real life, he didn't think a magic trick was happening. The moment was more impactful because of how easily photos can be realistically faked these days. It was only after I took the photo and he saw it in English in his hand it became a magic trick. He took the initial "live translation" completely in stride. Even five years ago the perfect live translation would have been an effect in and of itself. 

People's criteria for what constitutes "impossible" is constantly in flux. 

Best, 

Harry

PS: The next day it occurred to me that you could actually see the live translation change in real time by showing the English side to the camera but getting the app to translate it first into Arabic, with the hope it would pass for real. Show them the fake Arabic as if it's the real Arabic side, then you'd hit the language swap button in the Google translate app to see it change in real time into English, then show it changed to English in real life too. 

It turns out our estimations of what is possible with technology don't meet that idea just yet and it looks pretty shit (see attached) But maybe it could work with a simpler design. 

Translating the Arabic side into English creates an interesting middle act - you could show the poorly translated Arabic to English (attached), then "refocus the camera" by moving the gum and phone closer and further from each other, (turning the gum over in that action) to then show a much better translation. Then show it's changed in real life. 

I like this idea. I’ve always liked tricks where something in the digital/virtual realm affects something in the real world. However, as I said at the beginning, it’s perhaps of limited use—unless you live somewhere where packaging like this is availble, but not too common that everyone already knows it has one language on each side.

A similar idea you might want to pursue is to do something with color-changing knives and your friend’s phone camera.

You can change your camera's filter before shooting, and see the effect live in the preview.

So you could take a red knife, have them hold the phone camera over it and change the filter to black and white, and when you pull the knife out, now it’s black.

Or maybe to give the effect a little more build, you pull out a dull green knife.

You have them change the filter so it makes the colors more vibrant, and when you pull the knife out from below the screen it’s a bright green.

Then do the thing where you change the filter to black and white and the knife is now black.

The first moment is subtle enough that they will wonder if they saw it correctly. And the second beat creates a more obvious moment of magic.

And I think having the phone between their eyes and the knife will allow you to better choreograph a switch that leaves you with an examinable black knife.

This isn’t really my type of trick to perform. But if anyone wants to run with it, feel free.

Mailbag #176

I don’t think you’ve written anything about Instant Paper to Money 

It’s really smart and hyper visual but even in a pro setting it’s a pretty strange prop.  Let me show you what I can do with my several pieces of perfectly rectangular cut sheets of glossy magazine clippings that are all identical in size and are in my speciality weird wallet.

I bought it without thinking because it is stunning and while the hype has died it was and is still being proclaimed as the new best method and Extreme Burn killer.  However, once I got it I just sat on it because these damn slips of paper are so unusual it’s annoying.  After weeks I finally gave it a go and tried to just get out of my own way and clear my head trash only to have my audience immediately question and ask about the slips of paper that are conveniently perfectly cut and sized to a $20 bill.  Even in a professional gig this feels like an impossible hurdle whether the audience verbalizes it or not.  Maybe I’ll intentionally tear the edges and make them look ragged and less perfect.  In fact maybe that’s what the creator should do, send them slightly oversized so the buyer can tear them up a bit to fit but still be truly torn.

Regardless I’m again left feeling like most people don’t really perform and the marketing engines are stronger than one may assume.

As a fellow Extreme Burn user, where you at on this one?—SK

For a casual performance, Extreme Burn is a much better option. Changing 1s to 100s is more organic and it’s examinable. And you can keep it in your wallet or pocket like a normal human.

That said, this is a pretty trick.

I don’t think ripped edges really solves the problem you’re facing. Now you’re a person carrying around ripped pieces of paper rather than cleanly cut pieces of paper. That doesn’t make you any less weird.

I think the best approach is to address it presentationally. If you’re demonstrating a counterfeiting technique, or a way to hypnotize people to see cut up paper as money, then it makes sense you would have these items with you to demonstrate such a thing. That’s more than enough reasoning in professional performing stiuations. In social situations it could still be seeen as somewhat unusual, but there’s no way around that really.

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This video for "Headache" shows up in my feed a lot from Penguin. It's so obviously AI due to the way the camera pans and the creator shows up in different places that it's almost excusable. But the effect and reactions are also included in these seamless extended scenes so it's questionable what is real if anything and what's not. —RD

Yeah, I’m certainly not going to wave the flag that there should be no AI used in magic advertising at all. I can see they were trying to do something interesting with it there. But I can also understand why it would make any ad that uses it feel suspect.

More importantly, if I was marketing magic, I’d want to avoid AI because it has a certain charmless-ness to it. I know very few people who say, “Oh, look at this great AI ad!” But I know tons of people who are actively turned-off by it or find it weirdly unsettling.

What’s interesting is the ubiquity of AI has led to advertising that is technically more professional and polished, but people now associate that AI look with cheapness not professionalism. Like every shitty restaurant I know has advertising that looks like this now.

And while that might have looked fine 10 years ago, now it just looks like they put the least possible effort into it. And it raises the question, “If the food here is good, wouldn’t you want to show us pictures of the actual food?”

I tend to feel the same way about magic advertising. It seems like the biggest selling point should be the demonstration of the routine. When this is chopped up, abbreviated, modified with AI, or not shown altogether, it doesn’t instill great confidence in the routine.

Regarding Headache, I don’t find the AI use egregious. It just doesn’t add anything to the marketing for me personally.

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Protection Spell is a good starting point to anyone new to the site. In making my notes for the site, I finally read about this and have shown it to a couple of people.  The cards and pencil are in my wallet and I think this is a pretty good litmus test to see if handling this kind of material is something the performer is comfortable with. Originally, I had tried to think of a basic beginner trick to apply your ideas to and chose 8 card brainwave. This has its own problems if it’s something you carry with you everyday (space, examination, magician-centricity) and Protection Spell just keeps the same essence. Getting to this conclusion was a lesson in how effect has priority over method choice. —CJR

Protection Spell is good for both people new to the site, and audiences new to the style of presentation I write about here.

It’s a small effect (50/50) so you’re not asking them to play along with something too fantastical. And you can gauge their interest as you delve into the presentation, and if they don’t seem engaged, you can jump to the climax fairly quickly. This lets you know that in the future they’re probably not someone who is going to be locked into a long-form, more immersive trick.

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There’s a shockingly dull trend that hit the DFB facebook page today and unsurprisingly is very popular there. What do you think? — JC

This feels like one of the less impressive ways to hide a word in an image. And given that’s it’s something AI clearly shits out in 2 seconds, it’s not even that interesting.

If anything, I’d probably go the other way with it: show the written name as a failed prediction and then zoom out to reveal the image. In that case it might be better if the image is made up of a bunch of different names so you can scan over to the next name. “Is it Rihanna? Cardi B? Megan Thee Stallion?” And as you zoom out it’s just a cluster of more and more names, as if you were covering all your bases, until finally the image reveals itself.

But either way, this sort of thing never comes off as much more than a gag to people. There’s no real sense that you “screwed up” and then made things right. There’s nothing particularly magical about it.

It’s the phone version of a corny packet trick.

Dustings #147

Austin Lineback has been kicked out of the GLOMM.

If only we’d had some clue this guy was an unhinged piece of shit. Oh wait…

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This looks like it’s a great book for Marcs.

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Yoo-hoo, Jay. Over here!

I think Sankey needs to update his eyeglass prescription. Pretty sure he’s talking to a lamppost here.

Obsession

Once a month, at least, I'll get a long email from someone asking me what I think of their new presentation.

They'll describe the trick to me and it will have what sounds like a lot of interesting elements—the spectator's aura, numerology, some psychological experiment, and a drawing the magician did as a child. I don't mean it will have one of those elements. It'll have all of them. (Not those specific ones. That's just an example.)

And I'll say something like, "It sounds interesting. But I'm not quite following. What is the trick, exactly?"

And then they'll reiterate what they told me the first time.

And I say, "No, I mean from the spectator's perspective. What did they just see happen?"

And that's where the conversation fizzles out. Because they can't answer it.

Their motivation is good. They had a standard meaningless magic trick and they attempted to give it some more compelling presentational elements. But they ended up with a presentation that wasn't meaningful, so much as it was "complex."

Complex can be fine in a novel or a TV series. But it's not great for a magic trick, which by its nature is already going to have something the spectator can't wrap their head around.

Dai Vernon said a good magic effect should easily be described in one sentence. He was talking about what happens in the trick itself. But I think what's more important is that the premise can be explained in one sentence.

You can have a complicated trick where half a dozen things are happening, but if you have a simple premise—

"The magician stepped into a closet that he said took him 12 minutes into the future. When he stepped back out, he was able to predict everything I would do for the next 12 minutes."

then you're all set.

They may not remember every beat of the trick. But they'll remember the premise.

If you can boil the premise down to a sentence, that's your best hope of having a story that sticks with them.

Storytelling Example: Obsession

During one of my daily updates last month, I recommended seeing the movie Obsession.

Since that recommendation, the movie has gone on to become the highest-grossing original live-action films of the decade. Now, is that because I recommended it? Possibly. We'll never know. But I'm guessing at least a couple hundred million of that was the "Jerx-bump."

One thing that makes the movie so good and watchable is the simplicity of the premise: a guy makes a wish that his longtime crush will fall madly in love with him, only for her devotion to spiral into a possessive nightmare.

That's the extent of the backstory. He wishes on a novelty item (a "One Wish Willow") and it actually works.

I watch a lot of horror movies, and so many are bad because they would over-explain how she came to be obsessed with him.

"Turns out the novelty item was a cursed Egyptian relic. The girl is the reincarnation of the guy's long-lost lover from 3,000 years ago. The wish doesn't just make her love him—it awakens her past-life memories and a parasitic demon that feeds on unrequited love, so now she's obsessed, violently jealous of anyone who ever talked to him, and slowly turning into a monster unless they complete a ritual involving his childhood teddy bear."

This is what I often see magicians doing when they try to come up with a "better" premise—they cram in a bunch of different concepts because they think more equals more interesting. It doesn't.

Hook, Line and Winky

This is an idea for a trick that would be the strongest, most memorable, most talked about trick you ever perform in your life.

The problem is that almost none of you—possibly no one—will be able to do it.

First, you get Hook by Eric Ross.

Then, you get a prince albert piercing.

Replace the piercing with the hook.

Walk into the room with 5 strings sticking out of your waistline.

An intriguing way to start with an unibelievable ending that will have people contemplating what would have happened if the trick went wrong for the rest of theeir lives.

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Okay, since I wrote the draft of this post, I actually got someone to try it out—an old friend I reached out to and asked, “Do you still have that hole in your dick?”

“Which hole?” he replied.

Fortunately it turns out he had both.

I sent him the gimmick and he reworked it to be a single hook and performed it this past weekend. I wasn’t there for it, but t sounds like it went off as spectacularly as I imagined.

Am I going to tell you to pierce your junk just to do this?

Yes. That’s what I’m tellling you.

The Creature in the Corner

I was staying at a friend's house a couple of weeks ago and I got up in the middle of the night to take a leak. Not wanting to wake her, I tried to navigate the hallway without turning on any lights. As I walked past the open door of a room on my way to the bathroom, I saw some sort of creature in the corner, sitting in the dark.

It was about four feet tall, it looked like it was maybe covered in long hair or something, and it had two glowing eyes staring right at me.

I couldn't make out any other details because the room was illuminated solely by the moonlight coming in through the window, and this creature was off in a corner, away from the main shaft of light.

I paused. I stepped back from the doorway so I couldn't see it (or, rather, so it couldn't see me).

I peered in. It was still looking at me.

I took a step towards it into the darkened room, but it stayed where it was.

I took another step. It didn't flinch.

Another step. Its eyes were frozen.

One final step. And it started feeling considerably less animate than it did on first glance.

I reached out and my hand cast a shadow across one of the glowing eyes.

I touched the cursed monster and realized it was an exercise bike with a jacket hanging off the display screen. The "eyes" were the silver plugs on the ends of the handlebars that curved forward and inward around the jacket.

I let out a deep breath. I was significantly less concerned this thing was going to kill me or steal my soul. (On the negative side, it wasn't going to grant me wishes either.)

Did I ever really think it was some kind of hairy goblin? Probably not. But it was the middle of the night, I was half asleep, in a new place. So while I wasn’t sure it was a creature. I wasn’t sure it wasn’t either. It was just this mysterious thing until every step I took stripped it of its mystery a little. The closer I got, the less dangerous it became, the less alive, the less capable of becoming anything.

A lot of magic gets diminished the same way. Not by being explained, exactly, but by being over-defined.

If, at breakfast, you put a strawberry under a coffee mug, mumble some kind of incantation, lift up the mug, and the strawberry is gone, your friend watching might wonder what they just saw. Especially if you seem to not fully comprehend it yourself. Was it a trick? Was it a glitch in the matrix? Did she really see a strawberry in the first place? What was that incantation about?

Now exchange the coffee mug for a spun copper cup. And the strawberry for a crocheted ball. Add two more cups and more crocheted balls. Exchange the placemat for a close-up mat. Don't simply vanish one thing. Make the balls vanish and appear over and over. Have them penetrate the bottom of a cup. Have them all gather under one cup.

Every additional beat of magic or bit of polish you add to a trick ends up clarifying the category of the experience for people. It tells them, "This is a magic performance. This has been engineered. This has been practiced." In some contexts, that's exactly what you want.

But I think the most affecting amateur magic occurs when they're not sure exactly what they just saw. It must have been a trick, of course… but it had all the rough edges of…something else.

Consider that before adding another phase, a second climax, or using special props that look only like something you'd get at a magic shop.

Are you sure you want to take that step forward if it ends up making things safer, smaller, and more easily understood?

Sometimes the best thing you can do is keep them in the doorway a little longer, let the eyes keep glowing, and let the creature remain a creature.